Category Archives: multiculturalism

Post navigation

In a gut-wrenching development, it may turn out that last year’s report detailing a decade-and-a-half of sexual exploitation inflicted on at least 1,400 children from Rotherham, England—and the PC-driven effort to cover it up–may represent the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The city’s Labor MP Sarah Champion believes as many as one million children may have been victimized, describing it as a “national disaster” that requires the establishment of a task force to deal with the “horror.”

Champion picks up the story following the release of a report, titled “The Independent Inquiry Into Child Exploitation in Rotherham, 1997-2013.” “The day after the first report broke the victims started coming to me,” she told the Daily Mirror. “They couldn’t go to the police, they couldn’t go to the (Rotherham Borough) Council. So who do you go to?”

“For the first three weeks I generally thought I was losing my mind. I nearly lost my mind because of the level of depravity and horror,” she continued. “Listening to what these, now women, had gone through and how they were just left discarded, to flounder on their own. It was utterly mind-blowing and then the problem I had was that I was getting new cases coming to me, ones that hadn’t been reported which they wanted me to report. But I didn’t know who I could trust in the police to report it.”

“There was this parallel universe going on and it is mind-blowing,” she added, revealing that an average of 10 victims per week are seeking her help. Furthermore, it seems her concerns about the police were well-founded: a month after the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) began its investigation, 14 officers were suspended.

Last week a subsequent inspection report written by former Victims’ Commissioner Louise Casey was released, following allegations two councillors and a police officer had engaged in sex with minors. It hammered the Council for being “in denial” and failing to protect children because of “misplaced political correctness.” Minutes after the report’s findings were published, the entire Labor Cabinet of Rotherham Council, along with leader Paul Lakin, resigned. Five senior Whitehall officials, including a children’s services specialist, will assume control of the authority.

Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles announced new elections aimed at replacing the council’s “wholly dysfunctional” political leadership. “It is because the council is so seriously failing the people of Rotherham, and particularly some of the most vulnerable in that borough, that I am proposing to take this truly exceptional step,” he explained. “My aim will be to return these responsibilities to local democratic control as rapidly as possible.”

Cases contained in Casey’s report are highly disturbing. One concerns an alleged rape with a broken bottle, and girls being ordered to kiss the feet of a perpetrator at gunpoint. A mind-numbing 61 pregnancies were attributed to rapes. “Children were sexually exploited by men who came largely from the ­Pakistani heritage ­community,” the report stated. “Not enough was done to acknowledge this, to stop it happening, to protect children, to support victims and to apprehend perpetrators.” Inspectors further noted that council members bullied victims, with a witness insisting the council viewed those victims as “little slags.”

The police weren’t any better, refusing to believe accusations made by young girls on numerous occasions. “They were threatened with wasting police time, they were told they had consented to sex and, on occasion, they were arrested at the scene of a crime, rather than the perpetrators,” the report reveals.

Adding insult to injury, whistleblowers who raised concerns lost their jobs. “I stepped forward on behalf of young people – it cost me my job and my career,” one ex-staff member revealed.

A local police officer aptly illuminated the reasons for the coverup. “They were running scared of the race issue… there is no doubt that in Rotherham, this has been a problem with Pakistani men for years and years,” the officer explained. “People were scared of being called racist.”

Following the second report’s release, the National Crime Agency said it was looking into what were described as “potentially criminal matters.”

Last Wednesday an independent inquiry into the Rotherham scandal, along with the Westminster VIP pedophile ring that allegedly consisted of high-ranking members of Britain’s establishment abusing young boys in the 1970s and 1980s, was initiated. UK Home Secretary Theresa May appointed New Zealand High Court judge Lowell Goddard to lead the investigation that may last until 2018. In addition to investigating the two scandals, Goddard’s inquiry will also determine whether other public bodies, including government entities, charitable organizations, the Church and the BBC, also failed to step up and protect children.

The probe was initially set up last July to deal with the Westminster case, but failed to move forward due to a series of scandals that included the disappearance of a 40-page dossier on suspected establishment pedophiles compiled in 1983, raising suspicions of a government cover-up. May reached overseas for her investigator because the inquiry lost its first two chairs due to questions about their possible links with establishment figures.

Goddard promised the latest effort would put survivors “at the forefront and the whole center” of her inquiry. She will travel to the UK to meet Secretary May and discuss the investigation’s scope. The National Crime Agency told the Daily Mail Goddard’s probe would not slow down their own investigation.

A victim of the Rotherham scandal was overjoyed at the latest turn of events. “Finally somebody has listened to us,” said a mother whose daughter had been sexually exploited for five years—beginning at age 11. “Thank god my children will be safe now.”

Perhaps. “There are hundreds of thousands and I think there could be up to a million victims of exploitation nationwide, including right now, Champion warned. “Girls in the process of being groomed.” She explained her calculations “If you just think we know at least four big cases each with a couple of thousand each in smallest towns. It’s extraordinary,” she said.

Not really. It’s a very ordinary and predictable reflex born of decades of infatuation with political correctness and multiculturalism. Better to allow children as young as 11 to be systematically abused in Rotherham for more than 16 years, chiefly by men of Pakistani descent, than be labeled a bigot, racist or Islamophobe. Better to fire whistleblowers and better to bully the victims and/or dismiss them as low-lifes who deserve it.

This expanding investigation is now about far more than sexual abuse. The character of the entire UK is on trial. Soon the world will know whether their surrender to multiculturalism and political correctness is completely abject—and irreversible.

NEW YORK – Amid controversy over whether or not Muslim “no-go” zones exist in Europe, Soeren Kern, a senior fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute and also at the Madrid-based Strategic Studies Group, contends they are “a well-known fact of life” in many parts of the continent.

Kern asserted the “problem of no-go zones is well documented, but multiculturalists and their politically correct supporters vehemently deny that they exist.”

“Some are now engaged in a concerted campaign to discredit and even silence those who draw attention to the issue,” he said.

As WND reported, Steven Emerson, director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, ignited the furor when he said in a Fox News interview Jan. 11, “there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim, where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.”

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo threatened to sue Fox News, charging its coverage of the issue “insulted” Paris, and the news channel issued an apology. But contrary to how it was widely reported, Fox News didn’t apologize for saying there were “no-go” zones, and supporters of Emerson argued he was guilty only of overstatement, not fabrication.

“I think Steve Emerson’s biggest mistake was to apologize so profusely,” Kern argued. “If Emerson had just said, ‘I made a mistake and what I meant to say was parts of Birmingham, not all of Birmingham,’ that would have been OK. But once you apologize and show the slightest bit of weakness, the attackers attack and try to devour. I think that’s what happened to Steve.”

In an interview with WND, Kern said supporters of multiculturalism typically have derided any news source or politician who dares openly proclaim the existence of “no-go” zones throughout Europe.

He believes the damage done to Emerson by the comment will pass.

“Emerson is a solid researcher, and his work is very well respected,” Kern said. “I think this will blow over; but we’re already entering presidential campaign mode for 2016, and I believe the entire controversy over ‘no-go’ zones in Europe is a completely fake, contrived controversy.

“I think the controversy is really only in the United States, and the French picked up on it,” he said. “If you read the readers comments in the French newspapers on the Fox News controversy, it is overwhelmingly, like nine comments out of 10, that readers agree with what Fox News said originally. Ordinary readers in France know what’s going on, even if the mainstream media on both sides of the Atlantic are trying to cover it up.”

Failed model

Kern believes the “multicultural model in Europe is failing.”

“There has been so much invested in this over the last 30 years, that those people who are promoting this are very afraid this is going to be reversed,” he said.

Kern stressed that uncontrolled immigration of a growing Muslim population is the underlying issue in many European countries.

“In Europe, like in the United States, immigration is literally out of control,” he said. “But the big difference is that in the United States, when you have Latin American immigrants coming across the border, they have a Roman Catholic Western worldview. But in Europe, with mass immigration coming from North Africa and the Middle Eastern countries, it’s a completely different worldview.”

Consequently, he said, a “huge clash of civilizations develops in Europe, and I think that’s why many want to cover this up and discredit anybody who talks about this openly.”

He thinks “the writing is on the wall,” and many more terrorist attacks like the one on Charlie Hebdo in Paris are inevitable, particularly in Europe.

Kern cited the rise of populist politicians such as Marine Le Pen in France, with polls showing that if there were a presidential race in France today there would be a blowback, as “a lot of French people are upset that immigration, security and integration issues have been swept under the carpet too long.”

Fueling the Western paralysis in dealing with radical Islam is the late 20th century doctrine of multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism is one of those buzzwords that does not mean what it should. The ancient and generic Western study of many cultures is not multiculturalism. Rather, the trendy term promotes non-Western cultures to a status equal with or superior to Western culture largely to fulfill contemporary political agendas.

On college campuses, multiculturalism not so much manifests itself in the worthy interest in Chinese literature, Persian history, or hieroglyphics, but rather has become more a therapeutic exercise of exaggerating Western sins while ignoring non-Western pathologies to attract those who see themselves in some way as not part of the dominant culture.

It is a deductive ideology that starts with a premise of Western fault and then makes evidence fit the paradigm. It is ironic that only Western culture is self-critical and since antiquity far more interested than other civilizations in empirically investigating the culture of the other. It is no accident that Europeans and Americans take on their own racism, sexism, and tribalism in a way that is not true of China, Nigeria or Mexico. Parody, satire, and caricature are not Chinese, African, or Arab words.

A multicultural approach to the conquest of Mexico usually does not investigate the tragedy of the collision between 16th-century imperial Spain and the Aztec Empire. More often it renders the conquest as melodrama between a mostly noble indigenous people slaughtered by a mostly toxic European Christian culture, acting true to its imperialistic and colonialist traditions and values.

In other words, there is little attention given to Aztec imperialism, colonialism, slavery, human sacrifice, and cannibalism, but rather a great deal of emphasis on Aztec sophisticated time-reckoning, monumental building skills, and social stratification. To explain the miraculous defeat of the huge Mexican empire by a few rag-tag, greedy conquistadors, discussion would not entail the innate savagery of the Aztecs that drove neighboring indigenous tribes to ally themselves with Cortés. Much less would multiculturalism dare ask why the Aztecs did not deploy an expeditionary force to Barcelona, or outfit their soldiers with metal breastplates, harquebuses[1], and steel swords, or at least equip their defenders with artillery, crossbows, and mines.

For the multiculturalist, the sins of the non-West are mostly ignored or attributed to Western influence, while those of the West are peculiar to Western civilization. In terms of the challenge of radical Islam, multiculturalism manifests itself in the abstract with the notion that Islamists are simply the fundamentalist counterparts to any other religion. Islamic extremists are no different from Christian extremists, as the isolated examples of David Koresh or the Rev. Jim Jones are cited ad nauseam as the morally and numerically equivalent bookends to thousands of radical Islamic terrorist acts that plague the world each month. We are not to assess other religions by any absolute standard, given that such judgmentalism would inevitably be prejudiced by endemic Western privilege. There is nothing in the Sermon on the Mount that differs much from what is found in the Koran. And on and on and on.

In the concrete, multiculturalism seeks to use language and politics to mask reality. The slaughter at Ford Hood becomes “workplace violence,” not a case of a radical Islamist, Major Nidal Hasan, screaming “Allahu Akbar” as he butchered the innocent. After the Paris violence, the administration envisions a“Summit on Countering Violent Extremism,”[2] apparently in reaction to Buddhists who are filming beheadings, skinheads storming Paris media offices, and lone-wolf anti-abortionists who slaughtered the innocent in Australia, Canada, and France.

The likes of James Clapper and John Brennan assure us of absurdities such as the Muslim Brotherhood being a largely secular organization[3] or jihad as little more than a personal religious journey[4]. Terrorism is reduced to man-caused violence and the effort to combat it is little more than an “overseas contingency operation.” The head of NASA in surreal fashion boasts that one of his primary missions for the hallowed agency is to promote appreciation of Muslim science and accomplishments through outreach to Islam. The president blames an obscure film-maker for causing the deaths of Americans in Benghazi (when in reality, it was a preplanned Al-Qaeda affiliate hit) — and then Obama makes it a two-fer: he can both ignore the politically incorrect task of faulting radical Islam and score politically correct points by chastising a supposedly right-wing bigot for a crime he did not foster.

What is the ultimate political purpose of multiculturalism? It certainly has contemporary utility, in bolstering the spirits of minority groups at home and the aggrieved abroad by stating that their own unhappiness, or failure to achieve what they think they deservedly should have, was due to some deep-seated Western racism, class bias, homophobia, or sexism otherwise not found in their own particular superior cultural pedigree that was unduly smothered by the West.

Woe to anyone in Sweden who dissents from the orthodox view that welcoming large numbers of indigent peoples from such countries as Iraq, Syria, and Somalia is anything but a fine and noble idea. Even to argue that permitting about 1 percent of the existing population to emigrate annually from an alien civilization renders one politically, socially, and even legally beyond the pale. (I know a journalist threatened with arrest for mild dissent on this issue.) Stating that there exists a Swedish culture worth preserving meets with puzzlement.

And yet, the realities of immigration are apparent for all to see: welfare dependency, violent bigotry against Christians and Jews, and a wide range of social pathologies from unemployment to politically motivated rape. Accordingly, ever-increasing numbers of Swedes find themselves — despite known hazards — opting out of the consensus and worrying about their country’s cultural suicide.

The taboo on such attitudes means that political parties, with only one exception, staunchly support continued immigration. Only the Sweden Democrats (SD) offer an alternative: real efforts to integrate existing immigrants and a 90 percent decrease in future immigration. Despite an unsavory neo-fascist past (not something unique to it, by the way), SD has become increasingly respectable and has been rewarded with electoral success, doubling its parliamentary vote from 3 percent in 2006, to 6 percent in 2010, to 13 percent in 2014. All the Swedes with whom I spoke on a recent visit expect the SD vote to grow further, something recent polls confirm.

If a party or bloc of parties held a large majority in Sweden’s unicameral parliament, SD would be virtually irrelevant. But the Riksdag’s two blocs are almost equally balanced. Three left-wing parties control 159 of 349 seats, while the “right wing” (quotation marks to denote that, from an American perspective, it’s hardly conservative) Alliance for Sweden, consisting of four parties, has 141 seats. This means that SD, with 49 seats, holds the balance of power.

But SD is deemed anathema, so no party bargains with it to pass legislation, not even indirectly through the media. Both Left and “Right” seek to isolate and discredit it. Nevertheless, SD has played kingmaker on certain crucial legislation, particularly the annual budget. In keeping with its policy to drive from power every government that refuses to reduce immigration, it brought down an Alliance for Sweden government in early 2014. Recent weeks saw a repeat of this scenario, when SD joined the Alliance in opposing the leftist budget, forcing the government to call for elections in March 2015.

But then something remarkable occurred: The two major blocs compromised not only on the current budget, but also on future budgets and power-sharing all the way to 2022. The left and “right” alliances worked out trade-offs so that elections need not take place in March, allowing the Left to rule until 2018, with the “Right” possibly taking over from 2018 until 2022. Not only does this political cartel deprive SD of its pivotal role but, short of winning a majority of parliamentary seats in 2018, it has no meaningful legislative role for the next eight years, during which time the immigration issue is off the table.

This is nothing short of astonishing: To stifle debate over the country’s most contentious issue, 86 percent of the parliament joined forces to marginalize the 14 percent that disagrees. The two major blocs diluted their already tepid differences to exclude the insurgent, populist party. Mattias Karlsson, the acting SD leader, accurately notes that with this deal, his party has become the only real opposition.

In the long term, however, things look good for SD, which will likely gain from this undemocratic sleight of hand. Swedes, long accustomed to democracy, do not appreciate a backroom arrangement that almost surely nullifies their votes in 2018. They don’t like its bullying quality. Nor do they take well to removing a highly controversial issue from consideration. And when the time comes to “throw the bums out,” as always it does, the Sweden Democrats will offer the only alternative to the tired, fractious coalition that will have been in power for eight long years — during which time immigration problems will alarm yet more voters.

In other words, this blatant act of suppression is spurring the very debate it is intended to quash. Before too long, the supreme issue of national suicide might actually be discussed.

(Washington, D.C.)– 100 years ago today, on November 14, 1914, the last “Caliph” of the Islamic world declared a holy war on all non believers. Just a few months later, a jihadist genocide of Christians occurred on a massive scale, resulting in the deaths of millions.

On the 100th anniversary of the religiously-motivated genocide of Christians, several Islamic groups, all of which have alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, hosted the first Muslim prayers ever at Washington, D.C.’s National Cathedral.

As Breitbart’s Dr. Sebastian Gorka reported earlier, two of the Islamic groups who organized the event–CAIR and ISNA–were documented by U.S. federal officials as unindicted co-conspirators in the largest terrorism financing trial in United States history. Additionally, evidence exists that each of the five Islamic groups who helped organize the event have deep connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. The goal of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to federal prosecution documents, is to wage a “grand jihad [holy war] in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within…”

Breitbart News was on the scene at Washington’s National Cathedral, hoping to get some answers to concerns about Islamic prayers being hosted at the Cathedral on such a painful anniversary and why the event was sponsored by alleged members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Breitbart News asked Dean of the National Cathedral, Gary Hall, whether it was appropriate to host Muslim prayers on the 100th anniversary of the last Caliph’s call for Jihad against nonbelievers, which resulted in the slaughter of innocent Christians.

Hall responded, “I did not know that it was that anniversary. But knowing it now, it actually seems to be more appropriate to have an event that is on an anniversary of a hard time… There have been atrocities on both sides. There have been extremists on both sides.”

He added: “The second thing, is that, the Christian church… a few centuries before was doing similar kinds of things in the holy land with the Crusader states and the Crusades themselves. Almost every religious tradition is guilty at some point of fostering violence in the name of that religious tradition.

Breitbart News asked Hall whether he knew that all of the Islamic organizers of the interfaith prayer event have been associated or direct members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

“No, I’m not aware of that,” said the Dean of the Cathedral. “We’re a faith community… This essentially was the time to come together and pray. I have not heard those allegations. I don’t think that they are germane to an event that is just essentially a prayer event.”

This reporter asked Mr. Hall whether he was troubled by the possibility that the organizers of the interfaith event have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, when the MB has previously been connected to prominent terrorists such as Osama Bin laden and Abu Bakr.

Hall responded, “No more so that it would alarm me that people in my own faith and tradition have links to other kinds of… inappropriate or unethical or immoral kinds of behavior. In other words, if I have a congregant that I would find unseemly, that’s guilt by association… I hear people’s concern, but it seems to be that the role of a faith leader is to try to bring people together.

“We always have to remember that Menachem Begin was a terrorist,” said the Dean of the National Cathedral. “Many of the early generations of Israel’s government were terrorists,” he added.

“Everyone’s hands are dirty at some point… There’s no one in the world who has absolutely clean hands,” Hall alleged.

Breitbart News questioned Hall about whether he knew about the Muslim Brotherhood’s extensive history of subversion in order to achieve their ends.

“I’m aware that they are the legitimately elected government of Egypt,” Hall stated.

When questioned whether he knew that the Muslim Brotherhood was started by devout Hitler admirer Hassan al-Bana, Hall said, “This event is not about the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“The kinds of things you are bringing up are the kinds of extremism that we are actually trying to disassociate with,” he said, accusing this reporter of being an ‘extremist,’ simply for mentioning the roots of the group who organized in his Cathedral.

Hall then accused this reporter of being a “McCarthyite,” because this was nothing more than “guilt by association,” he concluded.

Watch video of the interview at Breitbart. Jordan Schachtel really did a good job exposing interfaith dupe Gary Hall.

Over the weekend, former President Jimmy Carter attended the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conference in Detroit. There, he assured Muslims that the “principles of Allah” were designed to “bring peace and justice to all.” ISNA’s ties to terror-supporters are quite deep.

But Carter isn’t alone. For years, American leaders have lectured Muslims on the nature of Islam, in the fruitless hope that pooh-poohing Islamic extremism as a fringe element will somehow convince Muslims all over the world that America is more of a friend to them than Islamic radicals are. This week, Barack Obama said, “ISIL speaks for no religion” — which comes a shock to those who live in the world of reality, given that ISIL certainly speaks for a certain segment of a religion. Eric Holder has said that radical Islam is not consistent with the teachings of Islam. For years, George W. Bush assured Americans that Islamic extremists represented but a tiny minority of Muslims. Hillary Clinton wrote in her new memoir Hard Choices that “Not all Islamists are alike…it is in America’s interest to encourage all religiously based political parties and leaders to embrace inclusive democracy and reject violence.”

This may be true. Or it may not be true. What is certainly true is that American politicians, mostly Christian or atheist, know less about the nature of Islam and Islamic radicalism than members of ISIS. To suggest that a cursory examination of platitudes about the Koran provides enough knowledge to spout paternalistic expertise about the religion is insulting to Muslims of all stripes.

Here’s what we do know: the polls show that Islamic extremism is on the rise. That’s not because it’s a fringe element. It’s because the West has swallowed multiculturalism wholesale, to the point where it’s politically unpalatable to condemn Islamic extremism for the mass rape of children.

So, here is the evidence that the enemy we face is not a “tiny minority” of Muslims, let alone a rootless philosophy unconnected to Islam entirely. It’s not just the thousands of westerners now attempting to join ISIS. It’s millions of Muslims who support their general goals, even if they don’t support the group itself.

France. A new, widely-covered poll shows that a full 16% of French people have positive attitudes toward ISIS. That includes 27% of French between the ages of 18-24. Anne-Elizabeth Moutet of Newsweek wrote, “This is the ideology of young French Muslims from immigrant backgrounds…these are the same people who torch synagogues.”

Britain. In 2006, a poll for the Sunday Telegraphfound that 40% of British Muslims wanted shariah law in the United Kingdom, and that 20% backed the 7/7 bombers. Another poll from that year showed that 45% of British Muslims said that 9/11 was an American/Israeli conspiracy; that poll showed that one-quarter of British Muslims believed that the 7/7 bombings were justified.

Palestinian Areas. A poll in 2011 showed that 32% of Palestinians supported the brutal murder of five Israeli family members, including a three-month-old baby. In 2009, a poll showed that 78% of Palestinians had positive or mixed feelings about Osama Bin Laden. A 2013 poll showed 40% of Palestinians supporting suicide bombings and attacks against civilians. 89% favored sharia law. Currently, 89% of Palestinians support terror attacks on Israel.

Pakistan. After the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the Gilani Foundation did a poll of Pakistanis and found that 51% of them grieved for the terrorist mastermind, with 44% of them stating that he was a martyr. In 2009, 26% of Pakistanis approved of attacks on US troops in Iraq. That number was 29% for troops in Afghanistan. Overall, 76% of Pakistanis wanted strict shariah law in every Islamic country.

Morocco. A 2009 poll showed that 68% of Moroccans approved of terrorist attacks on US troops in Iraq; 61% backed attacks on American troops in Afghanistan as of 2006. 76% said they wanted strict sharia law in every Islamic country.

Jordan. 72% of Jordanians backed terror attacks against US troops in Iraq as of 2009. In 2010, the terrorist group Hezbollah had a 55% approval rating; Hamas had a 60% approval rating.

Indonesia: In 2009, a poll demonstrated that 26% of Indonesians approved of attacks on US troops in Iraq; 22% backed attacks on American troops in Afghanistan. 65% said they agreed with Al Qaeda on pushing US troops out of the Middle East. 49% said they supported strict sharia law in every Islamic country. 70% of Indonesians blamed 9/11 on the United States, Israel, someone else, or didn’t know. Just 30% said Al Qaeda was responsible.

Egypt. As of 2009, 87% of Egyptians said they agreed with the goals of Al Qaeda in forcing the US to withdraw forces from the Middle East. 65% said they wanted strict sharia law in every Islamic country. As of that same date, 69% of Egyptians said they had either positive or mixed feelings about Osama Bin Laden. In 2010, 95% of Egyptians said it was good that Islam is playing a major role in politics.

United States. A 2013 poll from Pew showed that 13% of American Muslims said that violence against civilians is often, sometimes or rarely justified to defend Islam. A 2011 poll from Pew showed that 21 percent of Muslims are concerned about extremism among Muslim Americans. 19 percent of American Muslims as of 2011 said they were either favorable toward Al Qaeda or didn’t know.

In short, tens of millions of Muslims all over the world sympathize with the goals or tactics of terrorist groups – or both. That support is stronger outside the West, but it is present even in the West. Islamist extremism is not a passing or fading phenomenon – it is shockingly consistent over time. And the West’s attempts to brush off the ideology of fanaticism has been an overwhelming failure.

I have been searching for moderate Islam since September 11 and just like a lost sock in the dryer, it was in the last place I expected it to be.

There is no moderate Islam in the mosques or in Mecca. You won’t find it in the Koran or the Hadiths. If you want to find moderate Islam, browse the newspaper editorials after a terrorist attack or take a course on Islamic religion taught by a Unitarian Sociologist wearing fake native jewelry.

You can’t find a moderate Islam in Saudi Arabia or Iran, but you can find it in countless network news specials, articles and books about the two homelands of their respective brands of Islam.

You won’t find the fabled land of moderate Muslims in the east. You won’t even find it in the west. Like all myths it exists in the imagination of those who tell the stories. You won’t find a moderate Islam in the Koran, but you will find it in countless Western books about Islam.

Moderate Islam isn’t what most Muslims believe. It’s what most liberals believe that Muslims believe.

The new multicultural theology of the West is moderate Islam. Moderate Islam is the perfect religion for a secular age since it isn’t a religion at all.

Take Islam, turn it inside out and you have moderate Islam. Take a Muslim who hasn’t been inside a mosque in a year, who can name the entire starting lineup of the San Diego Chargers, but can’t name Mohammed’s companions and you have a moderate Muslim. Or more accurately, a secular Muslim.

An early generation of Western leaders sought the affirmation of their national destinies in the divine. This generation of Western leaders seeks the affirmation of their secular liberalism in a moderate Islam.

Even if they have to make it up.

Without a moderate Islam the Socialist projects of Europe which depend on heavy immigration collapse. America’s War on Terror becomes the endless inescapable slog that the rise of ISIS has once again revealed it to be. Multiculturalism, post-nationalism and Third World Guiltism all implode.

Without moderate Muslims, nationalism returns, borders close and the right wins. That is what they fear.

If there is no moderate Islam, no moderate Mohammed, no moderate Allah, then the Socialist Kingdom of Heaven on Earth has to go in the rubbish bin. The grand coalitions in which LGBT activists and Islamists scream at Jews over Gaza aren’t the future; they’re the Weimar Republic on wheels.

Flash back to Obama in his tan suit wearily saying that he has no strategy for ISIS. The original plan was to capture Osama alive, give him a civilian trial, cut a deal with the moderate Taliban and announce the end of the War on Terror before the midterm elections.

So much for that.

Moderate Islam is a difficult faith. To believe in it you have to disregard over a thousand years of recorded history, theology, demographics and just about everything that predates 1965. You have to ignore the bearded men chopping off heads because they don’t represent the majority of Muslims.

Neither does Mohammed, who did his own fair share of headchopping.

The real Islam is a topic that non-Muslims of no faith who hold sacred only the platitudes of a post-everything society are eager to lecture on without knowing anything about it.

Their Islam is not the religion of Mohammed, the Koran, the Hadiths, the Caliphs or its practitioners in such places as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq or Indonesia. Their Islam is a religion that does not exist, but that they fervently believe must exist because without it their way of life is as doomed as the dodo.

All right, so it was only a straw poll conducted among viewers of yesterday’s BBC Sunday Morning Live debate programme: 95 per cent of Britons think multiculturalism has been a failure.

But as majority verdicts go, it was a pretty resounding one – and it was delivered despite the BBC’s best efforts to muddy the waters, first by wheeling out two of the nation’s Multi Culti Apologist big guns Owen Jones and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, and second by pretending that multiculturalism means something other than what it actually means.

Multiculturalism is a very specific political philosophy which could scarcely be further removed from the idea that we should live in one big, happy, multi-ethnic melting pot and all just get along. That’s because it means the exact opposite. It’s about separatism, not integration.

It was championed from at least the 1970s onwards by effete bien-pensants like Labour MP turned Social Democrat Roy Jenkins and is essentially a manifestation of the cultural guilt and self-hatred that afflicts the left-wing chattering classes. Rather than accept the truth which to most of us is glaringly obvious – that some cultures are manifestly superior to others – it urges us all to celebrate our differences and to accept values that we may personally find alien or even abhorrent in the name of creating a fairer, more tolerant and inclusive society.

So, for example, we in liberal Western culture generally take a dim view of marrying members of your own family, female genital mutilation, forced or arranged marriages, second-class status for women, voter fraud, systematic political corruption, honour killings, the organised grooming, trafficking and rape of underage girls, and so on.

In some of our immigrant communities, though, such practices are considered more or less acceptable. (And I’m only using that “more or less” modifier out of politeness).

We know that every year about 20,000 girls in Briton are considered “at risk” of female genital mutilation (FGM). (Somalis, mainly)

We know that among certain cultures – Pakistan’s, for example – that corruption is endemic. As Rod Liddle noted, Pakistani is 139th on Transparency International’s list of most corrupt countries – the higher the number, the more corrupt. And as Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk has corroborated, these practices have been “imported” into some of our “northern towns and cities.”

We know that in Britain every year at least a dozen women are victims of “honour killings” – and that the justice process is often hampered by the refusal of family members or people in the local community to testify in court.

And we can, I think, take with a fairly hefty pinch of salt the notion that the rape gang phenomenon is something which the broader Pakistani-Kashmiri community in Britain finds unacceptable. If this is really the case, how come it has been allowed to persist, unchecked for up to fifteen years, across Britain on an epic scale, without the perpetrators being named and shamed by their friends, families, colleagues, their community elders or their imams?

The failure of multiculturalism is not, of course, a new thing. Some of us have been warning for years that it is a disastrous policy for various obvious reasons: it militates against social cohesion; it violates the principle that all should be equal before the law and no groups – as contra the parallel Sharia courts now operating in Britain – should be singled out for special treatment; it strains Britain’s culture of tolerance to breaking point, while simultaneously diluting the national character and rejecting those qualities which once made (and still do make, up to a point) Britain such a desirable place to live; it makes it that much more likely that FGM, honour killings, voter fraud, rape gangs and the rest can carry on unchecked.

But these sensible arguments against multiculturalism have often been drowned out by the liberal-left either with the cry of “racist” or through the more subtle, but no less effective methods of distraction and dissimulation.

We saw both the latter techniques being used on BBC Sunday Morning Live. Owen Jones – fluent political operator that he is – tried to claim the moral high ground by arguing that blaming the Rotherham gang rape phenomenon on “multiculturalism” not only lets the perpetrators off the hook but also ignores the plight of the victims. (Short answer: it does neither and if you believe it does Owen, you’re thick and if you’re only saying it for effect then you’re wicked. You choose).

Worse still, almost, was the way at one point during the multicultural debate, the show decided to canvas the opinions of two festival organisers at Mela 2014 (“Europe’s biggest outdoors South-Asian festival”), both of whom assured us that they thought “multiculturalism” was a jolly good thing without for one second grappling with the philosophical or cultural implications of the term. The impression given was that to be against multiculturalism is like being against chicken tikka masala, or bhangra, or arts festivals or smiley brown skinned people or fun generally.

But multiculturalism isn’t and never was a handy synonym for “multiethnic”. And at last, it seems, the majority of British people have twigged.

Multiculturalism is the philosophy that says the grooming, trafficking and mass rape of underage white girls by Muslim gangs is not as bad as being thought Islamophobic.

Multiculturalism is the philosophy that says it’s better to let a little African girl get tortured to death by her relatives than it is to be thought culturally insensitive or judgemental.

Multiculturalism is the philosophy whereby when, say, a grant application is made to try to save for the nation an object of incalculable heritage value like the Fourteenth Century illuminated prayer book the Macclesfield Psalter, some politically correct gimp of a grants officer asks: “And how would this be relevant to the owner of the local Chinese takeaway?”

The sadistic beheading of the American journalist James Foley by an ISIL killer apparently from Britain, just a few days ago, is the first such killing of an American by a jihadist with a British passport.

But it is the second ritual beheading carried out by British Islamists (the head of a British soldier, Drummer Lee Rigby, was hacked from his body by two of them in Woolwich, London last year in full public view).

Jihadists from Britain are at the forefront of the most violent extremism seen in modern times and many will properly be puzzled by how such people be citizens of a civilised country like Britain and why we seem powerless to prevent them from behaving like this.

On 8 October last year Andrew Parker, head of MI5, Britain’s security service, said there were ‘several thousand Islamist extremists’ in the UK. He also said that the UK has ‘one of the most developed and effective set of counter-terrorist capabilities and arrangements in the world’. Adding ‘for the future there is good reason to be concerned about Syria. A growing proportion of our casework now has some link to Syria, mostly concerning individuals from the UK who have travelled there to fight or who aspire to do so. Al Nusrah and other extremist Sunni groups there aligned with Al Qaeda to attack western countries’.

If we knew all this last autumn, and if our capabilities and arrangements are so superb, why have we not only failed to eliminate the jihadist danger but actually seen it increase? Today about 500 young Muslims from Britain have travelled to Syria, turning jihad into a gap-year activity.

One answer is that instead of quizzing Parker (and his colleagues from MI6 and GCHQ) as to what should be done about several thousand extremists in Britain, Britain’s intelligence community was stunned by a barrage of criticism from civil liberties groups and the libertarians in the Tory and LibDem parties, a bizarre coalition, which was frequently joined by prominent ‘human rights’ lawyers.

Already under attack from this lobby thanks to the appalling activities of Edward Snowden, and of Julian Assange before him, our intelligence chiefs found themselves having to justify their work on our behalf instead of being able to request more resources and firmer policies to make carrying it out easier for them.

Just a few days ago another jihadist from London, known previously only as a rapper, whose music was broadcast on the BBC, was seen in ‘the Islamic State’ proudly holding the severed head of a soldier under the caption ‘Chillin’ with my homie of what’s left of him’.

Another Brit, Reyaad Khan, 20, from Cardiff boasted online of his ‘martyrdom ops’, ‘planning “fireworks” ’ and ‘executing many prisoners’. Abdul Amin, an engineering student from Aberdeen texted that joining ISIL was one of the ‘happiest moments of his life’. There are many other like these: the list is very long. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has admitted that ‘significant numbers’ of Britons are involved in the commission of atrocities’.

It is now obvious to everyone that almost ten years after the London bombings, Britain has a serious and growing problem when it comes to young British Muslims becoming radicalised and turning to terror. What now needs to be reflected upon is why this should be the case – and what our policy makers must do about it.

Part of the problem is that many Muslims in Britain come from parts of the world like Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Horn of Africa, where political violence is endemic. Yet the biggest single trigger of jihadism here has been our adherence to ‘multiculturalism’ which has meant that we have for far too long allowed vile Islamist ideologies to be propagated under the cover of ‘free speech’ or ‘religious freedom’.

Islamists in Britain have been able shamefully to exploit our proud tradition of freedom and staying out of religious disputes, seen as questions of personal faith. We have closed our eyes to the reality that to fight for ISIL and to slaughter and maim on its behalf is a political act, not a religious one.

Taken together, these tenets indicate that, for Muslims who take their religion seriously, there can be no question of integration at any level.

If integration is the goal, something appears to be going remarkably wrong.

Why the issue of the Islamic veil? It rests at the center of the clash between Islam and the West.

The veil seems to be used to keep the “wrong” men — those who are not close male relatives or guardians — at a distance. Relations between the sexes, apparently, must be controlled, the more rigorously the better. There is also the assumption that women are worth less than men [Qur’an 4:3; 4:34; 4:11]. They inherit less; they often cannot travel, even to see a doctor or pick up their children at school, without the permission of a male relative or guardian, and they may be beaten or divorced without recourse. They are subject to a different set of the laws: men may, under certain circumstances, marry up to four women — not only as if they are men’s property, but property that contains one’s honor in a way that, say, one’s chair does not.

Men and women are kept segregated. It appears concluded that if a man and woman are left alone in a room together, there might be passionate sexual activity at some alarming point. Marriage laws are also restrictive[1]; this alone is a blow to our hopes for social integration.

Western societies, in contrast, make it possible for us to choose. In freedom to choose: to be conformist or non-conformist, to wear the clothes we prefer or read the books we select. Western democracies have come a long way since my early student days in Dublin, when a literature student could not buy novels such as Lolita, The Catcher in the Rye or Lady Chatterley’s Lover. We take for granted freedoms that many people living in Muslim states today can only dream of, or behold goggle-eyed from afar.

What kind of moral imperatives have led to the insistence that women cover their faces, or considering an interest in wine or chess or even cricket as mortal sins deserving punishment? This austerity is not unique to Islam; it has parallels in many religions. In Islam, much originates in social custom rather than in the Qur’an or the Hadithliterature [deeds and sayings of Mohammad]. Although the hijab does not appear in the Qur’an, which tellingly insists only on women’s chests being covered [Qur’an 24:31], the headscarf has now become a symbol of a woman’s identity as a Muslim. Many of these rules and regulations, however, have moved to the West and have created conflict where none was before.

Some Muslims, it seems, refuse to integrate for reasons of religion, through the communal doctrine of al-wala’ wa’l-bara — fear of losing one’s attachment to one’s primary community. Other Muslims might refuse to integrate from the fear of challenges that life in the West entail, such as deciding whom to date or marry, what books to read, what religion to believe in or not believe in — things we do every day and probably do not even think about.

Al-wala’ wa’l-bara’ has often been translated as “loyalty and enmity,” although it is more nuanced than that. Wala’means something like “friendship” or “benevolence,” as well as “fidelity.” Bara’ should be bara’a, meaning “being free” or “disavowal” or “withdrawal.” The idea is that Muslims should stick close to those who are near, to their friends — who should be only Muslims — and to everything associated with Islam. And that they should withdraw from, and consider themselves free of, non-Muslims. As the Qur’an (Surat al-Ma’ida, 5:51) puts it:

O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.

Muslims apparently also consider themselves free from our books, our art, our democracy (made by man rather than by Allah), our open debates — in short, our civilization, which is probably perceived as tempting, but impure, dissolute — with its promise of torment in hellfire mentioned frequently in the Qur’an. [2]

1. Contentment with the disbelievers
2. Reliance on the disbelievers
3. Agreement with Points of Disbelief
4. Seeking the affection of the disbelievers
5. Inclining towards the disbelievers
6. Flattery of the Disbeliever’s faith
7. Taking of Disbelievers as Friends
8. Obedience to the Disbelievers
9. To Sit with Disbelievers who Ridicule the Qur’an
10. To Give the Disbelievers Authority over Muslims
11. Trusting the Disbelievers
12. To Express Pleasure with the Actions of the Disbelievers
13. To Draw Near to the Disbelievers
14. To Aid the Disbelievers in Wrongdoing
15. To Seek the Advice of Disbelievers
16. To Honour the Disbelievers
17. To Live amongst the Disbelievers
18. To Collude with the Disbelievers
19. To Revile the Muslims and Love the Disbelievers
20. To Support the Ideologies of the Disbelievers

Taken together, these tenets indicate that, for Muslims who take their religion seriously, there can be no question of integration at any level.

The rejection of Western values by strict Muslims, as opposed, say, to the Amish, is that it has often been accompanied by extremist opinions and actions. The Amish do not say they plan to bring down Western society or to impose their will on non-Amish. Extreme Muslims do.

Although political correctness will tell us to accept everything other cultures do, there comes a time — not just for Westerners but for Western Muslims, too — when, if there is no evaluation of what is accepted, our societies risk becoming hollowed out from within.